Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller assumes command of the new Joint Task Force (JTF) GTMO, which is the product of the merger of the military intelligence and military police units at Guantanamo (see October 9, 2002). [Amnesty International, 10/27/2004] Although he is reported not to have had any formal training in the operation of prisons or in intelligence, Miller comes to be seen at the Pentagon as largely successful in extracting information from the prisoners. “[H]e oversaw,” according to the Washington Post, “a transformation of the… detention center at Guantanamo Bay from a disorganized bundle of tents into an efficient prison that routinely produced what officials have called ‘moderately valuable’ intelligence for the war on terrorism.” [Washington Post, 5/16/2004] The “Tipton Three,”—Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, and Shafiq Rasul—also notice the difference. “We had the impression,” Rasul recalls, “that at the beginning things were not carefully planned but a point came at which you could notice things changing. That appeared to be after [the arrival of] Gen. Miller around the end of 2002.” Thus, according to the Tipton Three, it is under Miller that the practice of so called “short-shackling” begins, which is the chaining of prisoners into squatting or fetal positions. Miller’s arrival also heralds, according to the three Britons, the start of sexual humiliation, “loud music playing in interrogation, shaving beards and hair,… taking away people’s ‘comfort’ items, the introduction of levels, moving some people every two hours depriving them of sleep, [and] the use of A/C air.” Also, isolation periods are stepped up considerably. “Before, when people would be put into blocks for isolation, they would seem to stay for not more than a month. After he came, people would be kept there for months and months and months,” the three allege. “Isolation was always there.” Additionally, the occasional call for prayers is ended under Miller. [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ]

In a memo to General Counsel William J. Haynes, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, without an explanation, rescinds his authorization for the majority of the interrogation methods he approved in December (see December 2, 2002). The remaining methods can only be used with his express approval and on an individual basis. [New York Times, 8/25/2004] He also forms a panel of top Defense Department officials, known as the General Counsel Interrogation Working Group, “to assess the legal, policy, and operational issues relating to the interrogations of detainees held by the US Armed Forces in the war on terrorism.” This should ultimately result in the development of proper interrogation techniques. [MSNBC, 6/23/2004] The working group will consist of people working in the offices of Haynes, Douglas Feith, the military departments, and the Joint Staff. Haynes will be the panel’s chairman. [US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ]

According to journalist Seymour Hersh, by the summer of 2003, US-led forces have conquered Iraq but it becomes increasingly obvious that there is a growing insurgency movement. However, the US knows very little about the insurgency. A secret military report from the time states, “Human intelligence is poor or lacking… due to the dearth of competence and expertise.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his close assistant Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone try to solve this problem by authorizing increasingly aggressive interrogation of detainees in Iraq prisons. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the Guantanamo (or “Gitmo”) prison in Cuba, comes to Iraq with a plan to “Gitmoize” the prisons in Iraq to make them more geared towards interrogation (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003). A former intelligence official will later tell Hersh, “They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq. No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot.” The program mentioned is Operation Copper Green, which allows secret task forces to capture and interrogate wanted figures with very little oversight, and which is expanded to Iraq around this time. This official continues, “And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targets” - meaning Iraqi detainees -“than people who can handle them.” As a result, Cambone decides to include some of the military intelligence officers working in the Iraqi prisons in the special access programs that are a part of Operation Copper Green. “So here are fundamentally good soldiers—military-intelligence guys—being told that no rules apply. And, as far as they’re concerned, this is a covert operation, and its’ to be kept within Defense Department channels.” As a result, more and more people, including the MPs (military police) pictured in the later Abu Ghraib abuse photographs, get involved in these covert programs that have almost no accountability and the stage is set for abuses to occur. The official says, “as soon as you enlarge the secret program beyond the oversight capability of experienced people, you lose control.” By the end of 2003, this official claims that senior CIA officials were complaining. “They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan—pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets—and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets.’” The CIA supposedly ends its involvement with the covert programs in Iraqi prisons, although exactly when this happens is not clear. [New Yorker, 5/24/2004]

Map of the US-occupied “Green Zone” inside Baghdad. [Source: Representational Pictures]There is a growing realization within the Department of Defense that the militant resistance in Iraq against the US and British occupation has been underestimated. An internal Pentagon document notes: “Their ability to attack convoys, other vulnerable targets and particular individuals has been the result of painstaking surveillance and reconnaissance. Inside information has been passed on to insurgent cells about convoy/troop movements and daily habits of Iraqis working with coalition from within the Iraqi security services, primarily the Iraqi Police force which is rife with sympathy for the insurgents, Iraqi ministries and from within pro-insurgent individuals working with the CPA’s so-called Green Zone…. Politically, the US has failed to date. Insurgencies can be fixed or ameliorated by dealing with what caused them in the first place. The disaster that is the reconstruction of Iraq has been the key cause of the insurgency. There is no legitimate government, and it behooves the Coalition Provisional Authority to absorb the sad but unvarnished fact that most Iraqis do not see the Governing Council as the legitimate authority. Indeed, they know that the true power is the CPA.” The report emphasizes that intelligence on the people involved in Iraq’s domestic uprising is insufficient. “Human intelligence is poor or lacking… due to the dearth of competence and expertise…. The intelligence effort is not coordinated since either too many groups are involved in gathering intelligence or the final product does not get to the troops in the field in a timely manner.” [New Yorker, 5/24/2004] The study is a contributing factor in the decision by the civilian leadership of the Pentagon to seek “actionable intelligence” from detainees being held in Iraq’s detention facilities (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003). [New Yorker, 5/24/2004]

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld directs his undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, to send Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to Iraq to review the US military prison system in Iraq and make suggestions on how the prisons can be used to obtain “actionable intelligence” from detainees. Cambone passes the order on to his deputy Lt. Gen. William Boykin who meets with Miller to plan the trip. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004; Newsweek, 5/24/2004]

Geoffrey Miller. [Source: US Army]Major General Geoffrey Miller, who oversees the prison at Guantanamo (see November 4, 2002), flies to Iraq for a 10-day consulting trip (see August 18, 2003). He is part of a team “experienced in strategic interrogation… to review current Iraqi theater ability to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence” and to review the arrangements at the US military prisons in Iraq. [Washington Post, 5/9/2004; New Yorker, 5/17/2004; Washington Post, 8/24/2004; Savage, 2007, pp. 190] The team consists of 17 interrogation experts from Guantanamo Bay, and includes officials from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). [Washington Post, 6/12/2004]Attempt to Increase Flow of 'Actionable Intelligence' - The Pentagon’s decision to dispatch the team on this mission was influenced by the military’s growing concern that the failure of coalition forces to quell resistance against the occupation was linked to a dearth in “actionable intelligence”
(see August 2003). [New Yorker, 5/24/2004] Miller has therefore come to help Brigadier General Barabara Fast improve the results of her interrogation operations. More to the point, he is supposed to introduce her to the techniques being used at Guantanamo. [New Yorker, 6/21/2004; Signal Newspaper, 7/4/2004] Officials are hoping detainees will provide intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein, who is still on the loose. [Washington Post, 5/16/2004]'Gitmoizing' Abu Ghraib - “[Miller] came up there and told me he was going to ‘Gitmoize’ the detention operation,” Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski, later recalls. [Washington Post, 5/9/2004] Miller will later deny he used the word “Gitmoize.” [Washington Post, 5/12/2004] During Miller’s visit, a Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) is established in order to centralize the intelligence operations at the prison. Captain Carolyn A. Wood is made officer in charge (OIC) of the Interrogation Coordination Element (ICE), within the JIDC. [US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ] Before returning to Washington, Miller leaves a list of acceptable interrogation techniques—based on what has been used in Guatanamo—posted on a wall in Abu Ghraib, which says that long term isolation, sleep disruption, “environmental manipulation,” and “stress positions” can be used to facilitate interrogations, but only with the approval of Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez on a case-by-case basis. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004] The use of dogs is also included, even though the technique was banned at Guantanamo eight months before by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (see January 15, 2003). [Washington Post, 7/19/2004; US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ] Karpinski later recalls, “He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you’ve lost control of them.” [BBC, 6/15/2004] Miller’s visit to Iraq heralds some significant changes, which include, first, the introduction of more coercive interrogation tactics; second, the taking control of parts of the Abu Ghraib facility by military intelligence; and third, the use of MPs in the intelligence collection process. During his visit, Miller discusses interrogation techniques with military intelligence chief Colonel Thomas M. Pappas. [New York Times, 5/13/2004]'Snowballing' Effect of Chaos, Brutality - “The operation was snowballing,” Samuel Provance, a US military intelligence officer, will later recall, describing the situation at Abu Ghraib after Miller’s visit. “There were more and more interrogations. The chain of command was putting a lot of resources into the facility.” And Karpinski will later say that she was being shut out of the process at about this time. “They continued to move me farther and farther away from it.” [Washington Post, 5/20/2004] Major General Anthony Taguba (see March 9, 2004) will later determine that Miller’s visit helped bring about the complete breakdown of discipline at the prison: “Interrogators actively requested,” at Miller’s behest, “that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogations of witnesses.” In essence, Miller tells guards to “soften up” prisoners so they will not be able to resist their inquisitors. Miller will later deny any responsibility for the Abu Ghraib torture program (see May 4, 2004). [Savage, 2007, pp. 190]

Rumsfeld visiting Abu Ghraib (his jacket is held over his back in both pictures). Karpinski is in both pictures as well. [Source: Associated Press (top) and CBC (bottom)]Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visits the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He is guided by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski. It is not known otherwise who he visits, how long he stays there, or what is discussed. [New York Times, 5/14/2004] However, his visit comes exactly at the time (late August-early September 2003) that Rumsfeld expands Operation Copper Green to Iraq, allowing interrogators to use more aggressive techniques, such as sexual humiliation (see (Late August 2003 or September 2003)). Rumsfeld’s visit also comes in the middle of a week-long visit to Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who is there with a team pushing for more aggressive interrogation techniques in order to get more actionable intelligence out of the detainees (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003).

Shortly after Major General Geoffrey Miller’s visit (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003) to Iraq, three “Tiger Teams,” consisting of six personnel, arrive at the Abu Ghraib prison facility. Each team consists of an interrogator, analyst, and linguist, who work together as a team. The use of Tiger Teams is an approach that has been successfully used at the Guantanamo detention facility. Gen. George R. Fay, in his later report (see August 25, 2004), will say he believes the Tiger Team concept was not appropriate for Abu Ghraib, because the “method was designed to develop strategic level information,” instead of tactical intelligence. [US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ]

Maj. Michael D. Thompson arrives at Abu Ghraib at the request of Col. Thomas M. Pappas to develop the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC), formally established during Major General Geoffrey Miller’s 10-day visit (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003). By December 2003, the JIDC will have a total of approximately 160 personnel including 45 interrogators and 18 translators. [US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ]

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba submits the final version of his report (see February 26, 2004) on the investigation into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib by MPs. He concludes that military intelligence personnel played a part in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But due to the fact that his investigation was limited to the conduct of MPs (see January 19, 2004), he did not investigate military intelligence conduct. Another investigation (see August 25, 2004), however, is launched that will examine military intelligence’s role in the abuses. It will be conducted by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence. But the scope of this investigation is also limited from the outset, for two reasons. First, as a two-star general, he cannot hold any officer of his own rank or higher accountable. Second, Fay is appointed by Lt. Col. Ricardo S. Sanchez and therfore the scope of investigation is limited to the people under Sanchez’s command. [Newsweek, 6/7/2004] Additionally, Fay may be less inclined to report negatively on military intelligence personnel, since his superior, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of Army Intelligence, has already stated that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was committed by “a group of undisciplined military police” who were acting on their own, and not upon instructions from military intelligence officers. [Truthout (.org), 5/14/2004]

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller plays down the significance of his role in the Abu Ghraib abuse, saying his team recommended in September 2003 “having the guard force passively involved in the ability to interrogate rapidly and effectively.”
[Washington Post, 5/9/2004]

Attempting to stem the flow of bad publicity and world-wide criticism surrounding the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and similar reports from Guantanamo Bay, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes, accompanied by Pentagon lawyer Daniel Dell’Orto, give a lengthy press conference to discuss the US’s position on interrogation and torture. Gonzales and Haynes provide reporters with a thick folder of documents, being made public for the first time. Those documents include the so-called “Haynes Memo” (see November 27, 2002), and the list of 18 interrogation techniques approved for use against detainees (see December 2, 2002 and April 16, 2003). Gonzales and Haynes make carefully prepared points: the war against terrorism, and al-Qaeda in particular, is a different kind of war, they say. Terrorism targets civilians and is not limited to battlefield engagements, nor do terrorists observe the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions or any other international rules. The administration has always acted judiciously in its attempt to counter terrorism, even as it moved from a strictly law-enforcement paradigm to one that marshaled “all elements of national power.” Their arguments are as follows: Always Within the Law - First, the Bush administration has always acted within reason, care, and deliberation, and has always followed the law. In February 2002, President Bush had determined that none of the detainees at Guantanamo should be covered under the Geneva Conventions (see February 7, 2002). That presidential order is included in the document packet. According to Gonzales and Haynes, that order merely reflected a clear-eyed reading of the actual provision of the conventions, and does not circumvent the law. Another document is the so-called “torture memo” written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (see August 1, 2002). Although such legal opinions carry great weight, and though the administration used the “torture memo” for months to guide actions by military and CIA interrogators, Gonzales says that the memo has nothing to do with the actions at Guantanamo. The memo was intended to do little more than explore “the limits of the legal landscape.” Gonzales says that the memo included “irrelevant and unnecessary” material, and was never given to Bush or distributed to soldiers in the field. The memo did not, Gonzales asserts, “reflect the policies that the administration ultimately adopted.” Unfortunately for their story, the facts are quite different. According to several people involved in the Geneva decision, it was never about following the letter of the law, but was designed to give legal cover to a prior decision to use harsh, coercive interrogation. Author and law professor Phillippe Sands will write, “it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall.” Sands interviewed former Defense Department official Douglas Feith about the Geneva issue, and Feith proudly acknowledged that the entire point of the legal machinations was to strip away detainees’ rights under Geneva (see Early 2006). Harsh Techniques Suggested from Below - Gonzales and Haynes move to the question of where, exactly, the new interrogation techniques came from. Their answer: the former military commander at Guantanamo, Michael E. Dunlavey. Haynes later describes Dunlavey to the Senate Judiciary Committee as “an aggressive major general.” None of the ideas originated in Washington, and anything signed off or approved by White House or Pentagon officials were merely responses to requests from the field. Those requests were prompted by a recalcitrant detainee at Guantanamo, Mohamed al-Khatani (see August 8, 2002-January 15, 2003), who had proven resistant to normal interrogation techniques. As the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, and fears of a second attack mounted, Dell’Orto says that Guantanamo field commanders decided “that it may be time to inquire as to whether there may be more flexibility in the type of techniques we use on him.” Thusly, a request was processed from Guantanamo through military channels, through Haynes, and ultimately to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who approved 15 of the 18 requested techniques to be used against al-Khatani and, later, against other terror suspects (see September 25, 2002 and December 2, 2002). According to Gonzales, Haynes, and Dell’Orto, Haynes and Rumsfeld were just processing a request from military officers. Again, the evidence contradicts their story. The torture memo came as a result of intense pressure from the offices of Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. It was never some theoretical document or some exercise in hypothesizing, but, Sands will write, “played a crucial role in giving those at the top the confidence to put pressure on those at the bottom. And the practices employed at Guantanamo led to abuses at Abu Ghraib.” Gonzales and Haynes were, with Cheney chief of staff David Addington and Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee (the authors of the torture memo), “a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse,” in Sands’s words. Dunlavey was Rumsfeld’s personal choice to head the interrogations at Guantanamo; he liked the fact that Dunlavey was a “tyrant,” in the words of a former Judge Advocate General official, and had no problem with the decision to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld had Dunlavey ignore the chain of command and report directly to him, though Dunlavey reported most often to Feith. Additionally, the Yoo/Bybee torture memo was in response to the CIA’s desire to aggressively interrogate another terror suspect not held at Guantanamo, Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002). Sands will write, “Gonzales would later contend that this policy memo did ‘not reflect the policies the administration ultimately adopted,’ but in fact it gave carte blanche to all the interrogation techniques later recommended by Haynes and approved by Rumsfeld.” He also cites another Justice Department memo, requested by the CIA and never made public, that spells out the specific techniques in detail. No one at Guantanamo ever saw either of the memos. Sands concludes, “The lawyers in Washington were playing a double game. They wanted maximum pressure applied during interrogations, but didn’t want to be seen as the ones applying it—they wanted distance and deniability. They also wanted legal cover for themselves. A key question is whether Haynes and Rumsfeld had knowledge of the content of these memos before they approved the new interrogation techniques for al-Khatani. If they did, then the administration’s official narrative—that the pressure for new techniques, and the legal support for them, originated on the ground at Guantanamo, from the ‘aggressive major general’ and his staff lawyer—becomes difficult to sustain. More crucially, that knowledge is a link in the causal chain that connects the keyboards of Feith and Yoo to the interrogations of Guantanamo.” Legal Justifications Also From Below - The legal justification for the new interrogation techniques also originated at Guantanamo, the three assert, and not by anyone in the White House and certainly not by anyone in the Justice Department. The document stack includes a legal analysis by the staff judge advocate at Guantanamo, Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver (see October 11, 2002), which gives legal justifications for all the interrogation techniques. The responsibility lies ultimately with Beaver, the three imply, and not with anyone higher up the chain. Again, the story is severely flawed. Beaver will give extensive interviews to Sands, and paint a very different picture (see Fall 2006). One Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) psychologist, Mike Gelles (see December 17-18, 2002), will dispute Gonzales’s contention that the techniques trickled up the chain from lower-level officials at Guantanamo such as Beaver. “That’s not accurate,” he will say. “This was not done by a bunch of people down in Gitmo—no way.” That view is supported by a visit to Guantanamo by several top-ranking administration lawyers, in which Guantanamo personnel are given the “green light” to conduct harsh interrogations of detainees (see September 25, 2002). No Connection between Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib - Finally, the decisions regarding interrogations at Guantanamo have never had any impact on the interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Gonzales wants to “set the record straight” on that question. The administration has never authorized nor countenanced torture of any kind. The abuses at Abu Ghraib were unauthorized and had nothing to do with administration policies. Much evidence exists to counter this assertion (see December 17-18, 2002). In August 2003, the head of the Guantanamo facility, Major General Geoffrey Miller, visited Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, accompanied by, among others, Diane Beaver (see August 31, 2003-September 9, 2003). They were shocked at the near-lawlessness of the facility, and Miller recommended to Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the supreme US commander in Iraq, that many of the same techniques used at Guantanamo be used in Abu Ghraib. Sanchez soon authorized the use of those techniques (see September 14-17, 2003). The serious abuses reported at Abu Ghraib began a month later. Gelles worried, with justification, that the techniques approved for use against al-Khatani would spread to other US detention facilities. Gelles’s “migration theory” was controversial and dangerous, because if found to be accurate, it would tend to implicate those who authorized the Guantanamo interrogation techniques in the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. “Torture memo” author John Yoo called the theory “an exercise in hyperbole and partisan smear.” But Gelles’s theory is supported, not only by the Abu Ghraib abuses, but by an August 2006 Pentagon report that will find that techniques from Guantanamo did indeed migrate into Abu Ghraib, and a report from an investigation by former defense secretary James Schlesinger (see August 24, 2004) that will find “augmented techniques for Guantanamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded.” [White House, 7/22/2004; Vanity Fair, 5/2008]

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